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The climate talks in Paris are being
held in a (now less used) airport. Once you've got your pass
(remarkably quickly, I thought) you wander into the main centre. The
first image you come to, on each side of the corridor, is a wall
showing the sponsors.

COP sponsors board, as seen on arrival. Photo: Adam Ramsay, CC2.0

In pride of place – top and centre –
is EDF: the French mostly state owned company with numerous coal and
gas power stations(pdf) churning carbon into the atmosphere across the
world.

Turn left, and you find yourself in a
vast room – what I assume was an airport terminal, or similar.
Inside is a series of temporary rooms built out of plywood. “Delegate
offices”, as they're called. It mostly looks like this. The white writing in the walls tells you who is in each room. In almost every case, it's a country.

The UK has one. Germany has one. Norway has one. Sometimes, it's groups of countries
– Africa seems to have just one to share, opposite Germany's.

Panama seems to be sharing theirs with the Coalition of Rainforest
Nations. And they had set up a display and a free juice bar outside theirs.

The
former has a huge list of members on their website, including BP,
Shell, and the TransCanada Corporation, who hit the headlines
recently when Obama turned down their KeystoneXL
Pipeline.

The
latter has a nice graphic of all its members on
its website, showing their members also include BP and Shell, as well as the controversial Dow Chemicals, and many more big polluters.

Their
joint pamphlet tells us that the main partners for the event include
American oil giant Chevron, a company which caused
controversy when it refused even to sign up to support the
measures proposed by the likes of BP and Shell.

Here
is the hangout area they are hosting, right next to all of the
governments' delegations.

Round the corner from them, these guys were also among the select few who got a space in with the government delegations.

Dig
around in their bumph, and you discover that this is effectively a
stall for the Air Transport Action Group. Their members include
Boeing, Airbus, and the International Air Transport Association, who
themselves represent a
huge number of the world's airlines. Given the contentious questions around highly polluting international flights at an international climate conference, it's not surprising that they'd be so keen to get their hands on such prime real-estate.

There are a couple
of other organisations in this exclusive area: for example, the OECD have a
space, where I snapped a quick picture of this somewhat
male-dominated panel.

How much will all of this impact on the coverage? This space is the first you get to as you enter the venue, and is close to the journalists area. Wandering around the venue, it was the first room I found myself in; and the first people who had leaflets for me to pick up and space for me to sit around in were these corporate lobbyists. While business representatives were given pride of place, I've yet to find the NGO area. I'll keep you updated on events tomorrow.

We're digging through the media to see how climate change is reported over the Paris climate talks and beyond. Sign up to hear what we find out.

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